Suspect in serial killings well-known around his Milwaukee neighborhood

Suspect in slayings well-known in his neighborhood

MILWAUKEE — Walter Ellis was anything but unknown in his north side neighborhood in Milwaukee — a mix of condemned and run-down houses with some nicer, newer homes.

Even as the bodies of suspected prostitutes began turning up in garbage bins and abandoned buildings near his home, the stocky Ellis had regular — sometimes violent, often friendly — interaction with neighbors and family, and more than a dozen run-ins with police.

Officers even stopped him while investigating several of the nine slayings that went unsolved.

Now those who know the 49-year-old are trying to come to grips with the fact that the man everyone knew as “Wadell” stands charged in two of the deaths and could face more charges Thursday.

“Who wants to say … ‘I grew up with a serial killer,’ not on God’s green earth. Who would ever fathom such a thought,” said ViAnna Jordan, 51, who grew up a block from Ellis.

Ellis, who moved to their neighborhood from Mississippi as a child, is described in court documents as an unemployed laborer without a high school diploma. He made his first court appearance on Wednesday, when a court commissioner set his bond at $1 million. Police have said Ellis’ DNA matches that found on nine women ages 16 to 41 who were killed in a three-square-mile area from 1986 to 2007.

He has been charged with two counts of first-degree intentional homicide in the deaths of Joyce Mims in 1997 and Ouithreaun Stokes in 2007. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for Sept. 23. Ellis’s attorney, Alejandro Lockwood, did not immediately return a telephone call for comment.

Investigators believe eight of the women were prostitutes and died by strangulation and one was a runaway whose throat was cut by someone other than Ellis — though they think he was at the scene. Court documents indicate that officers were looking for “possible ligatures” to be used for strangulation when they searched his house.

A search warrant also notes that the person who attacked Stokes and Mims was likely injured because blood was found at the scene. It says Ellis had scars on his back and face consistent with stab wounds and cuts.

Ellis was not a stranger to law enforcement, with 15 arrests since 1978. He’s received probation or fines for burglary, delivery of a controlled substance and retail theft. He also has faced charges of soliciting prostitutes, battery, robbery and recklessly endangering safety, all of which were later dismissed. He received a 3-year prison sentence for drug possession in 1981.

It was in 1988 that he pleaded no contest to second-degree reckless injury. According to the criminal complaint, he hit his ex-girlfriend in the head several times with a claw hammer, causing her to get 30 staples and more than 22 stitches. The complaint said the woman woke and found him standing over her, smelling of alcohol and accusing her of cheating. She got out of bed, they struggled, and he hit her with the hammer, it said.

Ellis, sentenced to prison, was supposed to have DNA taken before he was released in 2001 under a state law that mandated taking samples from people convicted of a felony.

The state Department of Corrections said it did take the sample, but the state Justice Department said it has no records showing they ever got it. On Wednesday, legislators demanded to know why the DNA sample never made it to crime analysts. If it had, police say, the case might have been solved before the last of the slayings occurred in 2007.

In 2006, Ellis pleaded guilty in a hit-and-run involving Carolyn S. Prophet, 57, of Milwaukee. Prophet, who is disabled and has problems walking, said Ellis hit her car repeatedly and then swore and threatened her.

“The man is a psycho,” she said. “He kept ramming me.”

Bystanders stepped in when he got out of the car, she said. Ellis told them he was going to call police at a pay phone but never returned. She said the police who investigated the crash told her they knew Ellis from prior run-ins.

Prophet grew up in the same neighborhood as Ellis, but said she didn’t really know him. She said she’s had a migraine ever since she saw his photo on the news.

“I said, ‘I know him! I know him! That’s the man that hit me and wanted to jump on me,’” she said.

But Christopher Powell, 31, said he cannot see how the man he considers a father figure could have killed anyone. He said Ellis consoled him when a coach he had as a teen was killed and Ellis encouraged him to join the Navy. He said Ellis helped him sell drugs as a teen but then encouraged him to stop and get out of Milwaukee.

“He’s the one who encouraged me to do better in my life,” he said. “I don’t believe he did this stuff.”

Ebony Owens, 23, said she found one of the victims in a trash can near her house when she was 9. She took off the lid and “the lady’s legs popped out,” she said.

Owens lives on the same block as some of Ellis’ family, and saw him around occasionally.

“He was an average guy,” she said. “We didn’t see him as a serial killer.”

Jordan, the neighbor, said that as a child she tried to avoid walking past Ellis’ house — “He would come and just hit you out of nowhere,” she said.

But Jordan said Ellis seemed to have changed when she saw him about a year ago at a birthday party. She described him as pleasant and intelligent. She said she was shocked to hear of his arrest, but wishes someone would have helped Ellis early in his life.

“When I look back at it, all the indicators were there,” she said. “That behavior, the violent nature in him was already embedded.”

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Associated Press writers Dinesh Ramde and Todd Richmond contributed to this report.

(This version CORRECTS name to Ouithreaun, not Ouithrean).)